, president obama, house speaker john boehner, met face to face at the white house today for the first time in more than three weeks. we do not have any details about today's conversations but reps on both sides say the lines of communication remain open. the two men last met on november 16th. also today, another republican senator announced his support for raising tax rates on wealthy americans. tennessee senator bob corker says if the gop agrees to the wealthy tax hike, republicans would be better positioned to negotiate for bigger spending cuts on social security and medicare. >> there is a growing group of folks that are looking at this and realizing that we don't have a lot of cards as it relates to the tax issue before year-end. a lot of people are putting forth a theory and i think it has merit where you give the president the 2% increase that he's talking about, the rate increase on the top 2%. and all of a sudden, the shift goes back to entitlements. and all of a sudden, once you give him the rate on the top 2%, it's actually much lesser tax increase than what he's been talking abo